Theodora

by Christina McKnight

  Georgie glanced over her shoulder at Josie, and they shared the odd look they’d exchanged before Adeline had arrived. Did they know what had occurred between Theo and Alistair? Had he told Adeline of their kiss? Had she written to her friends about her brother’s confession?

  Her stomach rolled, and a sour taste filled her mouth as she wrapped her arms around her midsection.

  Did the trio speak of her behind her back—share tidbits of information between them? She could not expect them to be honest with her when she’d hidden the news of the kiss. Her actions were no better than theirs if her worries were true.

  Adeline focused on her stance, unaware of the look that passed between her friends. No, Adeline did not know about the kiss.

  Adeline, her long, blonde hair falling tangled down her back, lowered her bow with a sigh. “It is several days away still. He cannot seek to keep me locked away until I’ve been officially presented to society. His interests will be diverted by attentions more dire, I am certain of it.”

  Georgie and Josie gave a small giggle, but corrected themselves when Theo turned a hard stare on them. If they knew something, they’d best keep it to themselves, at least until after the tourney. She’d seen how Adeline had been affected by Mr. Price’s surprise presence in Whitechapel. They could not risk her being similarly distracted at the next tourney.

  “That is good to hear.” Theo set her hands on Georgie’s raised shoulders to push them down into a more relaxed position. “Exhale and release the tension in your shoulders. It will give your frame more flexibility and allow the bow to work as it should.”

  “He cannot continue to be vile forever,” Adeline continued, not raising her bow again. “I am unsure what he seeks to gain by his obtuse behavior.”

  “He was worried for your safety,” Theo said, adjusting Josie’s feet to widen her stance.

  “Worried?” Adeline huffed. “Certainly not. It is his need to control me—to assert his dominance as Mother and Father’s favorite, and to prove to them he can successfully marry off the lot of us. He is sadly mistaken if he thinks I will willingly agree to any match he selects. I will turn any man away he favors out of spite. We will see who the smug one is then. I can still hardly believe he barricaded me in my room with no other company but Ainsley.”

  “Ainsley cannot be too bad of company,” Josie sighed. “She is a sweet child.”

  “Her continuous questions about London fashion, ballrooms, silk gowns, face powder, and school are maddening. She hasn’t seen her eleventh summer yet, but fancies herself ready to enter a grand ball.” Adeline rolled her eyes as she took aim with her bow. “I could not take another second of it. I feigned a headache and asked for a few hours of rest.”

  Georgie released her arrow, hitting the target just below the red center.

  “You are shorter than the average target, like me,” Theo said. “Lift your aim ever so slightly.”

  “Why are the targets so far away?” Josie complained.

  “Yesterday, after Mr. Price’s and my shots were too close to announce a victor, they began a new round and moved the targets back ten paces,” Theo said. “We must be ready for another such possibility.”

  “But we are excellent archers,” Georgie said. “There is little chance of another similar outcome.”

  “There is likely to be over two hundred archers in attendance, Georgie,” Theo chastised. “The likelihood of another archer besting the pair of you is great. I’d have to ask Cart to be certain of the exact probability, but let us assume many of them have skill that is at least equal to ours.”

  “And if they are both bested on the field?” Josie dared ask.

  “Then we shall find another way to help Miss Emmeline,” Adeline snapped. “Can you all quiet down? I must concentrate.”

  Theo continued to move between her friends in silence, adjusting their shoulders, moving their feet, and correcting their aim—all the while thinking of Mr. Price.

  His sister proclaimed him a brute, but Theo suspected there was much more to the man than Adeline—or Theo—knew.

  However, it was not Theo’s place to seek out his hidden attributes.

  Chapter 13

  “Ainsley,” Alistair thundered when the child smiled at him, but made no move to explain herself. “You mean to tell me each morning—for the last, what did you say, ‘several days’—Adeline has claimed a headache and requested time to rest?”

  “Yes, Ali,” his youngest sibling responded, her smile brightening when she thought she was helping him. “That is correct.”

  He ignored her use of the nickname she’d given him as a babe, focusing on Adeline’s vacant bed instead. “Then why, must I ask, is she not abed?”

  He despised interrogating his siblings, but there was no way around it. He took in each pale head of hair either facing him or lowered to inspect their meal.

  “Maybe she is on the loo?” Adrian chimed in, stuffing a fork loaded with eggs into his mouth. His overly long hair caught in the tines and entered his mouth along with his eggs. “These girls use it more than we do.”

  “Do not!” Arabella and Amelia protested in unison, their matching blue eyes lighting with indignation.

  “You reek far worse than a stable hand after ten hours of work,” Alfred said, turning to his twin, Arabella, and prodding her with his elbow for good measure. “And their overuse of the loo is not all, they are messier than we are, too. Adelaide left her ribbons all over the piano in the parlor. I was unable to practice.”

  “What in heaven’s name do my hair ribbons have to do with Adeline’s whereabouts?” Adelaide said, giving Alfred her best icy-eyed stare. “Besides, I had good reason to leave my ribbons on the piano keys.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Abel sighed in exasperation. “And what would that be?”

  A smile spread across the girl’s face, her looks almost as compelling as Adeline’s but with an air of innocence that her older sister could not muster. “I had a dress commissioned that matches the ivory of the keys exactly. I needed to select the perfect ribbon to pair with the gown.”

  “A gown for what?” Amelia whined, her face flushed. “Alistair, why does Adelaide get a new dress and I don’t?”

  “Silence!” Alistair looked up and down the table, giving each sibling his sternest stare before moving back to Abel. “Please explain to me what you were thinking paying little Ainsley to keep watch over Adeline in your stead?”

  “I…well…” Abel gulped, knowing he’d made a grand mess of things.

  “I will tell you one thing I know for certain…” Alistair said, setting his fork aside, not having so much as taken a single bite since entering the breakfast room after going to check on Adeline. Imagine his shock to find her chambers deserted and her window open. “You shall not be attending White’s anytime soon. Actually, make that until you save the coin to pay for your own membership—and find a lord willing to sponsor you.”

  “That is not fair, brother,” Abel called from the far end of the table, his head hanging in shame. Alistair was unsure if he was remorseful or if his actions were meant as a ploy to get on his eldest brother’s good side once more.

  “What is not fair,” Alistair shouted, slamming his hand flat on the table, rattling his fork on his untouched plate, “is that I am responsible—duty bound—to see Adeline and the rest of you married well with a bright future; however, I cannot do that if the lot of you work against me.”

  Alistair wished he could claim a headache and sleep for the entire season—for it was clearly a disaster waiting to happen. Unfortunately, the opportunity to hide, to bury his head in the sand, did not exist for him. Though he wondered if he’d take the chance if it were offered to him.

  With a sigh, he retrieved his fork and set his gaze on the meal before him. Cook would think he was displeased with her food if he did not empty his plate.

  “I saw a flea-ridden mutt eating Cook’s tomatoes yesterday,” Adrian said with a snicker, throwing his last bite of toast down the f
ront of Arabella’s morning gown. The thirteen-year-old leapt from her chair and hopped around with her hand fishing down her blouse in search of the jam-smeared morsel as her hair came loose from the ribbon at the nape of her neck.

  “What in the bloody hell does that have to do with the topic at hand?” Alistair shouted over Arabella’s ranting at Adrian’s ungentlemanly demeanor, his meal forgotten once more.

  “Well, I allowed the dog inside, and he left the half-eaten, juice-dripping tomato in Adeline’s dress closet.”

  “Was Adeline in her room to witness the travesty?” Alistair couldn’t help from asking, turning his eyes to Abel, who he’d left to guard his wayward sister’s door.

  “No,” Adrian shook his head. “I followed the beast in and made certain he had a good tumble in Adeline’s bed before kicking him from the house once again. I won’t have the scabby dog eating my dessert.”

  Alistair’s head dropped to his hands. “But you found it acceptable to allow him to leave rotten fruit in your sister’s closet and roll around on her bed?”

  “It wasn’t my bed, so why should it concern me?” Adrian asked. “You told us to mind our own business.”

  It was the argument he was destined to have at least three times per day—shouting at one sibling or another to mind their own business and not concern themselves with what the others were doing.

  “You told me not to say anything to Amelia when you caught Alfred putting toads in her bed last week,” Adrian continued. “And you urged me to look the other way when Arabella knocked over Abel's shaving cream and tried to return it to the jar—along with the dirt from his messy floor.”

  “Adrian! Close your mouth!” Alistair warned.

  “But, Alistair,” the boy continued, not realizing the danger of Alistair’s flaring temper as his other siblings began to protest the injustices against them he’d attempted to cover up. “I didn’t say anything about you telling me that Adelaide is likely to never capture a beau if she doesn’t learn a bit about fashion.”

  He looked to his middle sibling as she looked down at her hideously orange day gown with mismatched blue hair ribbon, and he longed for the floor to open and swallow him whole.

  “Good thing you never told Ainsley her hair is the color of rotting straw!” Adrian finished triumphantly, returning to his meal—his work done.

  “I have never!” Alistair looked to Ainsley, begging silently for her to believe him.

  “Nope,” Adrian mumbled around a bite of cheese. “It was Amelia who confided that to me.”

  There was absolutely no hope Alistair would live long enough to see them all happily married. He’d promised his mother and dying father he could, but in that moment, Alistair realized he didn’t stand a chance, especially if all eight ever banded together against him.

  If his own siblings didn’t thwart his every effort, then surely the higher enclave of the ton would. They would be introduced to each of Viscount Melton’s children, and for some reason or other, would find them all wanting, no matter the time and energy and years of Alistair’s life he dedicated to them.

  “You little rat! Why I—“ Amelia started at her brother’s revelation regarding her aversion to Ainsley’s hair color.

  “Amelia,” Alistair said, standing. “Enough.”

  He looked up and down the long table once more, making eye contact with each sibling as they attempted to avoid his glare. “No one has any idea where Adeline is at present?”

  His tone dared any of them to lie to his face, for he would find out and return with a punishment befitting the crime.

  “She is not on the loo? Why does no one take my suggestion seriously?” Adrian asked. “Has anyone checked? I will not, because,”—he paused, pinching his nose and waving his hand before his face—“I learned my lesson on that score.”

  Abel and Alfred broke into laughter, and Alistair knew he’d be getting no useful answers from his siblings.

  No answers would be found within the Melton townhouse.

  Thankfully, he was acquainted with one woman who would surely have answers for him—and she lived only a short distance away in Mayfair.

  After a strict warning for none of his wayward family to leave the townhouse in his absence, Alistair called for his horse to be readied, and departed for Lady Theo’s townhouse—his meal having grown cold.

  He had no illusions that he could once again visit Lady Theo’s home without a proper introduction to her brother, Lord Cartwright, but Alistair was beyond options, and his patience was wearing thin. Adeline had sworn she would not disobey him again, that she understood the consequences for them all if she brought scandal to their family, yet here Alistair was, riding through the streets of London in search of her whereabouts.

  Like an utter fool.

  By the time the proper season was underway, he would be known as the laughingstock that was unable to tame his horde of siblings.

  Alistair thanked all that blessed him he wasn’t in the market for a bride himself, or he’d be avoided by every marriage-aged woman of the ton and given the cut direct from their mothers. He’d be eaten alive in society, no differently than at home.

  Part of him wondered if his parents hadn’t taken the easy path by bowing out of Adeline’s debut season. His siblings were a handful, even before Adeline had returned from school.

  He guided his mount through the early-morning streets. Servants rushed to do their masters’ bidding, and vendors with carts and baskets moved toward the marketplace to peddle their wares. He nodded to an occasional lord in greeting, but kept his pace consistent toward Mayfair.

  It was for the best. Alistair spurred his horse into a quick gallop. In just a few hours’ time, the speed would be made impossible as the ton ventured out of their homes to promenade in the parks or shop on Bond Street.

  Turning onto St. James, he noticed no activity in any of the drives he passed, which suited Alistair as he most certainly did not need his name attached to that of Lady Theodora Montgomery, especially in conjunction with a social visit far earlier than was proper. However, his hopes were dashed when he reached her drive to see a carriage departing as her front door closed. Someone had either just arrived or was only now returning home—but from where? He attempted to gain a look inside the enclosed carriage, but the draperies were pulled tightly over the windows, hiding the conveyance’s occupants from sight.

  Alistair waited on the street as the carriage moved down the narrow lane to the stables behind the townhouses.

  He abhorred he’d been brought to this level—seeking out Lady Theo to help tame his sister. Much as it pained him, however, his family and their future came before his pride.

  For the second time in as many days, Alistair found himself knocking on Lady Theo’s door and being greeted by the same servant.

  Behind the man, he noticed Lady Theo handing her bow and quiver to a waiting servant and then removing her cloak to reveal a muddied dress hem and dirt-caked half boots. She’d been practicing—but where in London were women allowed to hone their skills? Except on their own property, most women did not partake of archery. The sport was appropriate as a pleasurable pastime for women, but the ton would never approve of ladies gallivanting about to tournaments, or practicing in public locations.

  She had clearly been somewhere—very early—and her previous whereabouts would lead Alistair to Adeline.

  “Good day, sir,” the butler greeted, a slight sense of shock at his presence visible. “Lord Cartwright is not at home.”

  Alistair assumed his most jovial smile. “I am here to call on Lady Theodora. Is she receiving?” He glanced over the butler’s shoulder once more to see if his words had garnered her attention.

  “Mr. Price.” Lady Theo stepped before the servant currently holding her bow and quiver, attempting to mask their presence as the servant left the room. “How lovely of you to call. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “May we speak in private, my lady?” He had no intention of feedi
ng the servants’ gossip mill with word of Adeline’s disappearance. “It is of a sensitive nature.”

  Her brow furrowed suspiciously, but still swept her arm wide, “This way, sir. We may speak in my mother’s drawing room.” She preceded him down the hall, giving him ample time to admire the sway of her backside, her muddied hem moving from side to side with her quick pace.

  Neither made any move to close the door upon entering the space.

  A fire blazed in the hearth to ward off the last of the morning chill, as if someone had recently occupied the room.

  Lady Theo stood before the lounge and turned to him, her arms crossed. “What can I help you with, Mr. Price?”

  She was guarded, keeping a small table between them. He’d kissed her—in a most improper place—and then simply rode away without a backwards glance. Lady Theo had every right to be leery in his presence. In fact, he would not have blamed her if she’d refused him entrance to her home.

  “It is Adeline,” he confessed. “She is missing—climbed out her window and down the side of the house. I am worried she’s injured herself.” And if he found her in one piece after fleeing out her window, Alistair was tempted to rectify that situation. He’d chain her to the horse post in the stables if need be to keep her from her unmanageable ways. “Have you seen her?”

  “I have no idea why you’d think I know where Adeline went off to today.”

  “I am certain the notion springs from the simple fact that you knew exactly where she was the last time, yet saw fit to lie to me.” He made a show of glancing down at her stained hem and mud-splattered boots. “Come now, Lady Theo,” Alistair sighed. “Let us be past all this. I attempt only to keep my sister safe until she is properly wed and no longer my concern.”

  “Again with the topic of being rid of your sister.” Theo sat, nodding at him to do the same. “I am Adeline’s friend, and I have no allegiance to you, nor do I agree with your barbaric methods for keeping watch over your siblings.”

  He’d incorrectly thought their kiss—while uncalled for and inappropriate—had created a bond, a truce, between them. It was obviously not the case.